The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  Fury sparked in me. Her supercilious tone was outrageous, but as I struggled for a response, Sasha rumbled from the doorway, “The lady before you is your empress.”

  Vladimir took an enraged step toward him. “How dare you do this to us?”

  Sasha’s voice was flat. “Don’t think to play tsar with me, brother. You’ll receive twenty thousand a year, which is significantly more than our uncles. I can just as easily make it five thousand.”

  “Constantine will not stand for it,” blared Vladimir. “We will not stand for it. Am I, the son of an emperor, to subside on a mere pittance? Am I to forsake my wife because she is not of our faith, with three sons and a daughter to raise?”

  “Stand for it,” said Sasha. “Or leave Russia. As for your wife, the marriage was undertaken with our father’s consent. You may count yourself fortunate on that account.”

  I feared Vladimir might suffer an apoplexy. His face turned crimson as his mouth worked, forming words I prayed he wouldn’t say. He did not, thinking better of it and snarling instead to Miechen, “I’ve heard enough.”

  He stormed past me to the door. As I tried to catch Miechen’s eyes, to demonstrate I wasn’t only sympathetic but taken completely unaware, she swept past me without a word.

  I reached for the back of the nearest chair, my heel crushing the circular. As I looked over at him, Sasha said, “He thinks too much of himself, as does she. It is always his own family of whom a tsar must beware. Look at how my uncles treated my father. They think they won’t stand for it? I’ll not stand for it. They defy all rules. They come and go as they please, spending fortunes in the bargain—Russia’s fortune, which provides them with more than enough to live as they should yet for them is somehow never enough.”

  “Sasha.” I had to sit down. “He’s your brother. Would you have them become our enemies over money?”

  He eyed me. “You think it so small a matter? The cost of our coronation alone could finance a navy. But the Muscovites must have their procession. My treasury is taxed to its limits, with all the security measures and income paid out to keep the family in diamonds, wine, and roast. They swive like hares and all want to be titled as Your Imperial Highness so they can eat at the trough. I must pay to maintain our residences, yachts, trains, and museums, our ballet, art, and music academies. Every state reception requires a ransom. In the Winter Palace alone, I’ve been informed, the linens are changed daily, even if no one is there. I’ve dismissed most of those idle servants who do nothing all day and have forbidden gold braid on uniforms and liveries.”

  I met his stare. “Are we so diminished that you must forbid gold braid?”

  “Russia is diminished. You should know through your Red Cross work that we have hospitals and schools to build; we cannot thrive while maintaining a hundred grand dukes and their households. It’s a disgrace. No court in Europe wastes as we do. I will not tolerate it. If the tsar must economize, so must everyone else.”

  “Does that mean me, as well?”

  “You are the empress. You must set the style. Should you spend fifteen thousand rubles on a sable cloak and ten thousand on an evening gown from Paris, as your most recent dressmaker bills cite? I leave that up to you.”

  Stung at his unexpected rebuke, I retorted, “Not all of us care to dress like serfs.”

  “I never suggested we should. But that German must learn her proper place and teach Vladimir his. As for the rest,” he said, turning to the door, “they’ll not complain. Constantine knows he’s lucky to be alive. He would have been arrested for what happened to my father, had Vladimir had his way. I refused. Our uncle might be an impossible eccentric, but he would never have dared fling a bomb at his own brother. Would that I could say the same about mine.”

  He left me to return to his study. I thought I should go comfort him, for in that moment I knew he’d crossed an invisible threshold. As the tsar, he was subject to all the attending preoccupations and sacrifices that his rank entailed. But this sacrifice, made by a decree that might sever accord within the family, was one only I could understand—the sacrifice for his country. None of those who bathed in imperial largesse would accept that, for him, even before the Romanovs, Russia must come first.

  I admired him for it. I loved him all the more.

  But I did not go to him. I sat in my chair with the crunched-up circular under my feet and realized that, henceforth, it wasn’t only Nihilists whom we must guard ourselves against.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was May but cold as February. The savage wind was seeping through my layers of ermine, freezing my toes in my gem-encrusted slippers and turning my breath to icy vapor.

  All of Moscow waited, thousands gathered along the route from the Petrovsky Palace to the red-brick walls of the Kremlin and onion-domed jumble of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Sasha had ridden ahead astride a white charger, in his white cap and green uniform without adornment—a huge, solitary figure among the Hussars and lancers, the Cossacks in their astrakhan kalpaks, and the Garde à Cheval in their eagle-crowned helmets—followed by the exotic line of the representatives from our Asiatic domains.

  The melody of Moscow’s many church bells rang in vain against the thundering gun salutes. My golden and crystal-glass coach seemed impossibly distant as I moved toward it. The diadem on my head—a Romanov crown jewel, with its silk-lace veil and twined collars of diamonds and pearls, also part of the royal collection—felt heavy as stone, the silver-brocade mantle a frozen cascade down my back.

  Xenia was already inside the coach, dressed in her first court gown and kokoshnik. I hadn’t wanted her to attend, and my sons even less so, after Sasha told me that in the new electrical lighting installed in the Kremlin—the first ever in Russia and a novelty he’d embraced for our coronation—the secret police had discovered explosive devices timed to the switches. Every inch of wiring had to be checked. Further investigation led to a Moscow garret and a heap of the high-brimmed caps favored by Muscovites, each containing nitroglycerin bombs like the one that killed Alexander. The plot was foiled, but my distress was so acute that I refused to heed Xenia’s teary pleas to accompany me, until Sasha persuaded me to relent. “She’s our eldest daughter. She wants to ride with you in your carriage. Let her.”

  By decree, no caps were allowed to be thrown in the air as we passed, lest one of those cunning bombs escape detection. We’d been assured of no further threat, all the culprits under arrest, yet I battled near-paralyzing fear as the coach brought me down the route to where the clergy, the metropolitan, and Sasha waited. The crowds cried out my name; all I could see was an endless maw of open mouths. I was trapped with my daughter in a translucent cage, which might shatter at any moment when a bomb detonated beneath us.

  Only an hour later, but what seemed like years, I arrived. Taking Xenia’s hand in mine, I started to descend when the coach door opened. Sasha had broken protocol to escort us himself.

  “Manja.” He leaned toward me. “Our jewels suit you. You’re so white. Like a swan. But so sad. Smile, my love. Let the people see joy in their new empress.”

  I turned toward the crowds, their cheering rolling over me in waves. As I lifted my hand, I searched anxiously for that one dark face, the lone brooding figure with death at the ready, preparing to fling fire and brimstone as we stood before him.

  The people roared in adulation. With Sasha’s hand in mine and Xenia beaming at our side—she would later drive her brothers mad with her proud prattle about this day—we proceeded into the Uspensky Sobor, the Cathedral of the Assumption, with its five gold-painted domes and arched façades representing Christ and the four evangelists.

  Within, frankincense and myrrh rose in clouds. The iconostasis glittered with a thousand icons. The metropolitan blessed and handed to Sasha the imperial crown made for Catherine the Great, with its diamond cross surmounted by a huge ruby; as the congregation knelt, Sasha set his own
crown upon his head. Then I went to my knees before him. Removing his crown, he touched it to my forehead to symbolize our bond and placed upon my head the diadem of the empress consort, topped by a sapphire as blue as the sea. I had only seen my late mother-in-law wear it once, at a formal court event, and I was surprised by how light it actually felt on my brow.

  In the splendor of that moment, wreathed in incense and swelling hymns, our eyes met as I stood. Clasping me in his arms, Sasha whispered, “No man has loved a woman as I love you, my tsarina.”

  * * *

  —

  BY TRADITION, FESTIVITIES for the populace were held in Moscow’s Khodynka Field, on the outskirts of the city, where as the newly crowned emperor and empress we would distribute commemorative souvenirs of goblets and plates embossed with our insignia.

  We assembled upon a canopied dais in the field three days later, after an exhaustive round of galas. A gusty wind that only Moscow could bestow flapped the canopy with loud cracking sounds, like gunshots. I tried to suppress my fear as I saw the mobs of people, come from every far-flung corner of Russia to partake of our largesse. A bomb might be concealed by any of them—hidden under an embroidered sleeve or stuffed under the peasant skirts, though the wearing of hats was strictly forbidden.

  We stood cordoned off by guards, secret police disguised as tradesmen wandering among the crowds; to me, it was like a feeble fence of sticks against a swarm as the people queued up, one row for Sasha and one for me. We would not hand over the gifts ourselves, as a result of the security measures; chamberlains in bulletproof vests did it for us. Yet as each family came forth to grasp the cheap pewter plate or cup—they had little value, other than sentimental—my nails dug into my palms. I must have gone rigid, for Sasha glanced over at me, making me force out a smile. He’d shown no trepidation throughout our coronation, though he must have felt it. To all who beheld him, he was the very image of stern Batushka, Russia’s God-appointed Little Father.

  The queues seemed endless. I was growing faint with exhaustion when a mother and her child came before me. My designated chamberlain extended the plate. The mother, her kerchief removed as either a sign of respect or requirement by our strictures against headgear, lifted plaintive eyes to me, immobile on my dais. She didn’t appear old, yet her dark hair was threaded with gray, betraying her origins; peasant women aged precipitously in the harsh countryside. Wisps blew in the wind, untangled from the plaits that wreathed her head. Her cheeks were hollowed by hunger and suffering.

  She shook her head at the plate, issuing a babble of accented Russian I didn’t understand, for she came from the provinces, her dialect unfamiliar to me. My chamberlain barked at her, thrusting out the plate, and she lifted an imploring protest, pushing the bundled child before her, as if in defense.

  The wind unraveled the scarf wrapped about the child’s face; as I took a step back, my fear of violence getting the better of me, I saw an eruption of boils on the child’s cheeks.

  The chamberlain motioned to the guards to remove the woman, whose gaze locked on me. Without realizing what I was about to do, my voice issued from the tight dryness in my throat: “Wait.” I forced myself to the edge of the dais, which was low enough to make me feel completely exposed. “What is she saying?”

  “Nothing, Your Highness,” replied the impatient chamberlain, who must have been tired himself, on his feet for hours, handing out souvenirs. “Something about a blessing.”

  “Blessing?” I turned uncertainly to Sasha.

  “She wants you to bless the child,” he said quietly. “Some moujik believe the touch of the tsar or tsarina can bestow health. A superstition, Manja. You needn’t oblige.”

  I shifted my gaze to the woman. The guards were at her side, about to turn her away. Then I looked at that pathetic child—a boy or a girl?—and I heard a voice in my mind.

  Do not let yourself be overwhelmed. You are a Romanov now. You must accept your role and embrace it. There is no other way to survive.

  Of all those I might have recalled in that moment, it was my mother-in-law, long dead in her tomb. I was the empress, as she’d once been. In the end she’d eschewed it, sundered by loss and her husband’s infidelity. I must not do the same.

  I descended the side steps, waving the baffled chamberlain aside to approach the woman. The guards tensed; I ignored the silent warning in their stares.

  The child’s eyes were huge, brown like its mother’s, but empty, as if it had lost any capacity to feel. Reaching out my hand from my richly adorned sleeve, as if by some ancient instinct I set it on the child’s head and I whispered a prayer.

  The woman keened, falling to her knees, tugging the child down with her. “God save Your Majesty,” I heard her say, for that much I could understand.

  “No,” I replied. All of a sudden, tears salted my eyes. “God save you, child of Russia.” And I extended my hand to her.

  She leaned to it, not touching it with her own hands but setting her chafed lips on my skin. I felt her inhale, as if I exuded a preternatural aura. Turning to the wide-eyed chamberlain, I removed the plate from his hand and gave it to her. She clutched it to her chest, tears running down her gaunt face. Then she was gone, lost in the crowds, who had received their own baubles and now waited for us to depart before the food stalls opened and the entertainment began, intended to bring them respite for the rest of the day.

  When I returned to Sasha’s side, he said, “Never have I been prouder of you.”

  I didn’t feel proud. I felt freed. I no longer had to cower in abject fear of the Nihilist threat, of death by explosion or other terrible deed. It might still happen, but for today I had overcome it. I had behaved like a Romanov.

  To Russia, we owed our duty. It was something I vowed never to forget.

  * * *

  SASHA INSISTED ON an unvaried routine. He claimed it gave him something to look forward to while he endured his interminable cabinet meetings, wrestling with the complexities of the empire and his brothers and uncles, who barged in wherever he happened to be to expound upon a problem or complaint—and they had plenty of both. None left his presence satisfied, for he’d shout at them to get out if they refused to abide by his dictates.

  As a result, he started drinking too much. Never during the day, when he must attend to his duties, but often at night, when he’d disappear after supper to sequester himself in his study. I’d tiptoe in before bed to find him slumbering on his sagging couch, an empty vodka bottle at his side and his valet, Ivan, holding vigil in the corner, while his head of household, Tania’s husband, Prince Obolensky, fretted in the corridor. Tucking a blanket over my oblivious husband—there was no waking him in that state—I had the bottle removed and issued my inevitable reprimand to the prince, who assured me he’d do his utmost to curb Sasha’s consumption. I knew he would try and Sasha would have none of it, but it was important for me to express my displeasure.

  To ease Sasha’s burden, I established our routine. In the winter, we resided in the city for the Season, attending the opera and ballet and holding galas in the Winter Palace, where I reveled and he grumbled. In the spring, we went to Gatchina to enjoy outdoor activities. Early summer required a move to Peterhof by the seaside or Livadia in the Crimea to escape the heat. In autumn, we traveled to Denmark for our family reunion.

  Alix and Bertie joined us, along with their children. Sasha’s relief to be away from Russia was evident when we reached Copenhagen, where the reception by my parents, compared to our imperial excess, was frugal, homemade like my childhood dresses.

  “At last, we are free of prison!” Sasha boomed, stomping down the platform to embrace my father and my brothers. Valdemar was still unwed, but Freddie was now married, with children of his own. And while my youngest sister’s husband balked at leaving their home in Austria, so we rarely saw Thyra, my brother Willie welcomed the opportunity to leave Greece with his wife, Olga
, and their brood of six children.

  We, the women, assumed charge of our rambunctious offspring, mine among them. At Fredensborg, daily strolls by the lake, fishing, horseback riding, boating, and suppers on the terrace suited Sasha immensely. The boys rallied around him; he was always willing to help them bait their fishing rods or trudge into the lake up to his knees to haul out their stranded boats. In the twilit evenings, he walked the paths with my father, Bertie, and my brothers, swathed in cigar smoke, with the boys tagging right behind them like unruly martinets, for wherever Papa Sasha went, they wanted to be.

  He softened in Denmark. He berated Nicky less, was abstentious in his drinking, and he smiled more—that endearing smile that crinkled his eyes. His laughter at the boys’ antics as they threw socks filled with water at him and ran shrieking when he pounced after them resounded so frequently that Mama said, “I believe I hear a happy emperor.”

  “He is, here,” I said, reclining on the wicker chaise with Alix and smoking one of my thin Russian cigarettes, a habit that neither condoned.

  “And is the empress happy, too?” said Alix, with a sly look at me.

  Before I could respond, Mama declared, “Of course she is. Did I not tell her as much? When two people commit, there can always be love.”

  And love there was: In the sun-dried sheets of our bed, fragrant with lavender, Sasha and I renewed our passion, laughing like children ourselves and bringing Mama’s eyebrow up when we arrived late, disheveled, to the breakfast buffet.

  As if a spell were cast in Denmark, our empire ceased to exist. Without the burden of imperial constraint, we were just husband and wife, father and mother, and eager lovers.

  “If I could, I’d spend the rest of our days in peace,” sighed Sasha, when the time came to leave. “Your people know how to be satisfied with the simple pleasures of life.”